


pack up, don't stray

by daisysusan



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Reverse soulbond, Trope Inversion, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Raul and Mori have gotten themselves into a reverse soulbond, where it hurts when they're together instead of when they're apart. Feelings happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pack up, don't stray

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Send_Reinforcements](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Send_Reinforcements/gifts), [scheherazade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazade/gifts).



> This started as a silly card ficlet and I was bribed/threatened into giving it a happy ending, so I hope you all enjoy it! The title is from Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs because I like pain.

It take them a while to realize what's happening. The pieces aren't particularly clear—a bout of nausea after Fernando suggests in an interview that Raul should come coach in Madrid, a headache so bad Raul can barely stand up after he casually mentions that he would like coaching with Fernando. They don't put it together until a serious discussion of it makes them both throw up. "I don't want to retire yet," Raul had said, and Fernando had responded with "I'll wait."

"This didn't happen in Qatar," Fernando says later, and Raul shrugs.

"Maybe it's because that was only temporary."

Fernando's head twinges when Raul visits him in Madrid, a dull thudding pain that spikes when he pictures Raul standing next to him at the training ground. Spikes when Raul takes his hand in the cab after dinner, discreet and tucked between their legs. He doesn't say anything, doesn't want Raul to let go.

Raul winces when he says he doesn't want to leave, later, out of breath, his hair dark and wild against Fernando's sheets. Fernando knows why, felt the sharp pain in his temples. It doesn't matter; he would endure it if it meant Raul staying in Madrid. If it means dinners and breakfasts and Raul in his bed every night and his bathroom every morning.

Raul turns visibly green as Fernando lets his mind wander, and that's the worst part, the way it hurts Raul as much as it hurts him.

And that's it, isn't it? He knows Raul as well as anyone, watched all the interviews where Raul pretended that somehow Fernando was on a level with Zizou, knows that Raul would never do anything to hurt him, that Raul would hurt himself—his career, his body, his mind—to protect him. Knows that Raul will never come home if his being home somehow hurts Fernando, even if Fernando doesn't care.

That's when he decides.

He doesn't say anything to Raul—kisses him in the foyer, lets it linger longer than he should, until Raul is going to be late to the airport.

At the end of the season he resigns from the coaching position. It's not easy, never is easy to leave Madrid but at least this time he's not leaving Raul behind. At least now Raul can go home. 

And for a few beautiful weeks it looks like he will. They're not really talking—Raul left him a terse voicemail wishing him luck. He knows why Fernando resigned and doesn't approve, it's not hard to read between the lines when they've known each other this long. It doesn't exactly surprise him when the rumors shift a few days later—no longer Madrid but New York—signing with the Cosmos. Well, he did say he didn't want to retire yet. 

Fernando doesn't call, because he's a coward. He texts Raul to wish him luck and Raul doesn't answer. It's a silent "you don't get to uproot your life for me." Maybe it's because Raul never saw Real Madrid as any more his than Fernando's. He's wrong, of course, but sincere about it. Fernando wouldn't love him nearly as much if he weren't. 

They reach an unspoken eventually—Raul sends him pictures of New York and Fernando texts him about the weather in Valencia and neither of them has any crippling headaches or bouts of nausea. Fernando would rather have Raul and headaches.

"Come home," Fernando texts him after an event in Madrid. He's drunk on expensive wine and good company and after-midnight daring. His phone is dead when he wakes up the next morning, and he doesn't see his messages until after he showers—they're mostly banal reminder that he should drink some water, and a voicemail from Raul.

"I can't come home," he says, tired but kind. "But I miss you." Fernando's heart flips in his chest. "Come to New York," Raul says.

Before he can second guess it, Fernando agrees. He has to take painkillers before he can sleep that night, but the promise of feeling Raul is worth it.

He throws up on twice on the airplane, blames it on airsickness and bad fish and nerves, because it’s easier than thinking about how seeing Raul is going to make him sick. The rush in his stomach when he actually sees Raul standing there makes up for everything, the calmness of knowing that they can see each other and touch each other and, for a glorious few minutes, he thinks of staying forever, of waking up here every morning and feeling perfectly fine. 

His knees wobble a little, but that could easily be exhaustion from traveling. 

This time, he’s the one laid out on unfamiliar sheets, taken apart slowly and thorough. The headache that flared up in the car fades as Raul touches him, everything laden with unspoken meaning. Raul’s fingers trace patterns across his skin, the touch searing with all the pain it doesn’t bring. 

“How long are you staying?” Raul says, after. His voice is low, rough.

Fernando shrugs. “As long as I can.” _Until it hurts you so much that it’s interfering with your play_ , he doesn’t say. Raul pulls him closer, kisses the side of his head. 

In the morning, Fernando’s muscles ache. Not the pleasant soreness of exertion, but a crushing exhaustion that makes him feel like moving will be excruciating. The kind of muscle aches he associates with getting sick. 

Oh, he thinks with uncomfortable clarity. Raul has already gotten up; Fernando can hear him in the other room, soft humming and the occasional clink of dishes. He stays in bed until Raul leaves for training. 

They get a few weeks of dinners, of lazy evenings and lazier mornings, before the headaches are too intense and too persistent for Fernando to stay. He can see the way Raul’s hands shake when he reaches for his coffee, and the way he winces when Fernando thinks, idly, about how little he wants to leave. Fernando feels the twinge in his temples too, but anticipating it allows him to control his reaction. 

“I should go home,” he says later, his face pressed into Raul’s pillows. He’s become so accustomed to the dull throbbing in his temples that its absence is surprising. Raul doesn’t argue, even though Fernando wants him to. 

Being home is difficult, after. He doesn’t have the headaches constantly, but they’re not so terrible and he misses Raul so much it makes his stomach ache either way. Like losing a limb; as bad as it was the first time he left Madrid. He wakes shaking from dreams of Raul more than once, alone in his bed and his whole body aching just from thinking about it. He’s never sure if that’s him or this thing that happened to them or both. 

He’s not playing, the way Raul is, and he’s not coaching again, and the slowness of this life wears on him. They talk, sometimes, and he does commentary sometimes, and he plays a lot of golf. It’s not quite enough to throw himself into and forget the way his bed smells when he shares it with Raul or the comfort of coming home to a house that isn’t empty. 

There’s no alternative that doesn’t hurt.

And then—he wakes up to a voicemail from Raul. His voice, low and familiar, makes Fernando’s chest ache. 

“You shouldn’t have stopped coaching just because you thought it was keeping me away,” he says. “It was stupid,” and then “You don’t get to blow up your life just to make mine perfect.” 

Fernando puts his phone down, forces himself not to respond with “Fuck you.” 

“We should talk,” he sends instead, his hands shaking over the stupid tiny keyboard.

It’s still the middle of the night in New York, and he doesn’t get an answer for several hours. The anger hasn’t quite faded when Raul does call, and he finds himself answering with “Maybe I wanted to resign!”

There’s a pause, and then Raul says, his voice so calm and sure it physically hurts, “But you didn’t. You loved it.” 

Fernando can’t argue because of course Raul’s right. 

“You should have talked to me.” Now Raul sounds chiding, chastising. 

There’s no answer to that doesn’t involve baring his heart, nothing that doesn’t mean “I would do anything to make sure you’re happy” and “Nothing matters more to me than you do.” 

What comes out of his mouth is “I love you.” Which, to be fair, means kind of the same thing.

Raul doesn’t answer, but the pain in Fernando’s temples decreases anyway. Like the tension inside him has lessened just from saying it aloud, even if Raul doesn’t answer, even if Raul hangs up on him. At least he’s not holding it like a precious, dangerous secret. 

He can hear Raul swallow sharply, the sound distorted by the phone. 

The thing about self-control, about perfect, well-constructed self-presentation to the world is that when it snaps, when whatever’s underneath shows itself, it’s nearly impossible to stop it all pouring out. 

“It _hurts_ , Raul,” he says, “It fucking hurts being here but it hurts being in New York, too, and I miss you but I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have—”

“Shut up,” Raul says. 

Fernando does, a welcome reason to stop babbling. 

“Come to New York,” Raul continues. “Come and help at the youth academy and I don’t give a shit if it hurts because you’ll be here and we can make the rest of it work. I want you here.” 

He expects the pain to flare up, sharp and blinding behind his eyes, the way it has every other time they’ve talked like this but—it doesn’t. If anything, it decreases more. 

“Maybe we can win another trophy together.” It’s so quiet Fernando barely hears it, but it’s a beautiful thing to hear. Beautiful and exciting. 

“Okay,” he says before he even thinks it all the way through. “Yeah, okay.”

For the first time in almost as long as he can remember, nothing hurts. Not his head, not his muscles, not his heart. 

Ten minutes after he hangs up, as he’s in the middle of booking a flight to New York, his phone buzzes once. 

_I love you too, you moron_ , it says.


End file.
